In life, most people don’t get to meet their idols.
While just briefly, I got to meet four of mine — President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Clinton.
Reba McEntire was the other one.
There are four presidents (all dead) I would’ve loved to have met and spent the day with to talk about their time in public office. I’ll get to that.
And, I’d love to have spent more time with Hillary and to have met President Bill Clinton, but this is all about my favorite commander-in-chief, Jimmy Carter.
My idol and the nation’s 39th president (1977-1981) turned 100-years-old October 1st. This is a remarkable feat, not just the fact that he’s 100. Many others have lived that long and longer, but because President Carter entered end of life hospice care in February 2023!
He told his family this summer he wants to live long enough to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Until his health failed in recent years, he was still active in painting, fly-fishing, woodworking, cycling, tennis and skiing. Amazing!
President Carter is such an inspiring man and I hope to accomplish just a small fraction of what he’s done in his lifetime.
When I was in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2016, I visited the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and left this note for the Carters.
I finally got to meet President Carter and Rosalynn (pronounced “Rosa-lynn”) Carter in Plains, Georgia in July 2017!
HOW IT ALL STARTED…
In the fall of 1976, as a 12-year-old boy in Kentucky, I cast my first presidential vote for the Democrat Carter, and four years later, at 16, I voted for him again.
So, you might be thinking, that’s impossible. Many things go on in Kentucky that aren’t talked about in other states, but kids still cannot vote.
Well, since my grandmother Helen wasn’t very literate, I accompanied her into the voting booth and I got to vote for the candidate of my choice. Even then, I knew what I was doing.
Now, you might be thinking, why Carter? Maybe it was because he was a Southerner and he talked like me! I’m kidding. I just liked him.
As a kid, I didn’t know anything about gay rights, but then again, there was no such thing as “rights” for “those kind of people” in the mid-1970s.
While Carter was a deeply committed Christian, taught Sunday school and prayed several times a day, he was the first president to address gay rights and meet with gay rights activists.
He was opposed to the Briggs Initiative in California that would’ve banned gays from teaching in public schools.
In recent years, Carter supported the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and before marriage was legal for all, he was for civil unions. He “opposes all forms of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and believes there should be equal protection under the law for people who differ in sexual orientation”.
His one-term in office was not remembered kindly.
In addition to high inflation left over from the Ford administration, the last half of Carter’s presidency was tainted by the Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.
On a positive note, he negotiated the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, and both the Departments of Energy and Education were created during his four years in office.
CARTER AS A GEORGIA POLITICIAN
Before being elected to the highest office in the country, he served on local school, hospital, and library boards, served two terms in the Georgia Senate, and became the Governor of Georgia in 1971.
At that time, he bucked the Southern mentality by opposing racial segregation. His family was one of only two that voted to admit Blacks to the Plains Baptist Church.
Once he was elected Georgia’s governor, he commented, “I say to you quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over. No poor, rural, weak, or Black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.”
Carter appointed many African-Americans to statewide boards and offices. Then, after his one term (which was all that allowed at the time) as Georgia governor ended in 1975, he began his bid to win the presidency with almost no chance of winning since he wasn’t nationally known.
When he told his family he was going to run for President, his mother, Miss Lillian asked, “President of what?”
Carter became the front-runner by winning the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.
He used two different strategies while campaigning: in the South, he ran as a moderate favorite son and in the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters.
Carter chose Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate and in the November 1976 elections, he won the popular vote 50-48% over President Gerald Ford and received 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240 to become the first president from the Deep South to be elected since 1848!
With all of the problems he encountered as president, the 1980 election wasn’t pretty. He won only six states and the District of Columbia and lost the electoral vote to Ronald Reagan 489-49.
In a bittersweet moment, on January 20, 1981, just minutes after Carter’s term as president ended, the 52 U.S. captives held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Iran were released after 444 days, which he negotiated.
POST-PRESIDENCY
Since President Carter was a one-term president and so young when he left office (he was 56), he’s now the longest-lived president after leaving the White House (almost 44 years).
The four years as President took its toll on Carter and his legacy. He began his term with a 66% approval rating, but it dropped to 34% by the time he left office, with 55% disapproving.
Over the past decades, his reputation improved. In 2009, his approval rating was at 64% in 2009. “The Independent” wrote, “Carter is widely considered a better man than he was a president.”
I personally think he did a great job as President and he’s definitely a good man.
After leaving office, Carter returned to Georgia and, in 1982, he established “The Carter Center” in Atlanta to advance human rights, alleviate human suffering by promoting democracy, monitor the electoral process in support of free and fair elections and to improve global health.
He’s also worked very closely with “Habitat for Humanity”.
Among the numerous honors Carter received are the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the only U.S. president to have received the prize after leaving office.
In July 2023, President and Mrs. Carter celebrated 77 years as a married couple and were the longest-wed presidential couple. She passed away in November 2023 at the age of 96.
LET’S MEET FOR A MEAL
Like President Carter, I’m a bookworm. I once read a book detailing foods and meals presidents loved.
So, in a perfect world — another place and time — I could have spent the day with my idol.
We would start with pancakes for breakfast, have a salad with Roquefort dressing and soup for lunch, and a “Southern-style” fried chicken dinner with batter-fried eggplant and frozen yogurt for dessert.
In addition to Carter and Clinton, there are four other four presidents I’d love to dine with — in an alternate universe since they’re dead.
I’d love to do lunch with Abraham Lincoln over “chicken fricassee” and find out what it was like to be an awkward Kentucky boy (no Indiana, you can’t claim him) that went on to be one of the most beloved presidents of all-time that worked to abolish slavery.
I’d love to have fresh avocados, macadamia nuts, and rum and cokes with “Tricky Dick”, oops sorry, Richard Nixon to see if he was as mean as he’s made out to be.
Also, I’d love to meet Gerald Ford, and, of course, Betty, and share strawberries, butter pecan ice cream and conversation.
And, finally with Ronald Reagan, over honey-baked apples and an “orange blossom” gin cocktail, his favorite drink (when he had one), I’d ask two questions that made me dislike, almost hate, the man who seemed so gentle.
“Why did you wait so long, after so many gay men died, to mention “AIDS” in public — six years after it was first mentioned in the New York Times?”
And, after that, I would want to know if he really thought anti-war protesters, like the four students at Kent State University in 1970, deserved to die.
As California’s governor, he took a hard stance against hippie protestors by saying, “If there’s going to be a blood bath, let’s get on with it.”
Anthony
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